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Evidently, it is not Sion that asks.
The request comes in an unexpected phone call, a lazy Tuesday evening that had Daeyoung downing more than four cups of wine, just because.
Wonyoung is nectarine sweet when she asks.
“Oppa and I really want you to sing something for us,” her gentle voice pierces through the line. Daeyoung’s grip on his wine glass tightens. “You don’t have to! Well, Sion oppa seems to think that you won’t say yes but I thought I’d ask anyway. You know how he is.”
Daeyoung laughs nervously. “Ah. Wonyoung-ssi, I would be very honoured but…” He trails off, leaning his head on the cool marble of his kitchen counter. “I’m not sure. Does Doyoung hyung not want to do it instead? I think he would be better.”
“Doyoung oppa’s not coming to the wedding,” he can hear Wonyoung’s pout through the phone. “He’s on tour then.”
He’s running out of excuses, his pockets already dry of any bullshit that long emptied over the past few years. The countless amount of dinners, reunions and parties that Daeyoung constantly dodges - eventually, Sion stopped trying altogether. Daeyoung thinks back to the last text he got from Sion, just three weeks ago.
Their chat had been empty for an entire year, but Daeyoung hadn’t changed his customized ringtone for Sion, so his phone beeps a sickeningly familiar cheery rune that day.
The wedding’s on 24th August. Please come. It would mean a lot to Wonyoung.
Daeyoung feels the bile rising up his throat even now. He’s not a violent person by any means, despite his big and tall stature. Daeyoung couldn’t find it in himself to hurt a fly. But God, did Daeyoung want to punch Sion then.
What about you? Would it mean anything to you if I came? Daeyoung itches to text back. Could you face me? Would you see me?
“You don’t have to do it,” Wonyoung says quietly. Daeyoung has to give her credit where it’s due - the disappointment was lathered rather thickly on her words. “It’s okay. Forget I asked, Daeyoung-ssi. I’ll see you at the wedding, yes?”
Daeyoung hates Oh Sion.
Still, Daeyoung probably hates himself more.
“Wait, wait,” Daeyoung sighs. “I’ll do it.”
Ryo doesn’t let go when he sees Daeyoung walk into the venue.
“Ah, Ryo,” Daeyoung can barely breathe through Ryo’s arms around his neck. “Can you - hey, I’m gonna suffocate!”
“Shut up,” Ryo’s reply is muffled by the sleek black material of Daeyoung’s tuxedo. “I haven’t seen you in a year. I’ll suffocate you all I want.”
Riku’s squeaky laughter is unmistakable. “Hey. Let me have a turn.”
“Hm. No,” is Ryo’s very grown up and very mature reply.
The pile of human in Daeyoung’s arms gets heavier. “I almost thought you were dead,” Sakuya says lightheartedly, pressing down on Ryo’s smaller frame hard enough to elicit a yowl. “Change back the pin to your front door. I miss sleeping on your couch.”
“It’s true,” Riku snorts. Sakuya may be twenty seven and with his own luxury apartment, but it’s always felt too big and empty for him. “He’s sleeping on mine now almost every night. If I didn’t know better, I would think you’re homeless, Saku-chan.”
A blossom of warmth settles over where Daeyoung thinks there’s a gaping hole in his chest. He had been a terrible friend, Daeyoung knows that. They’ve been so tightly interwoven for years that avoiding Sion had also meant avoiding the other members. Daeyoung’s tiptoeing towards twenty nine, yet he still behaves like a heartbroken highschooler. The embarrassment practically kills him when his members still flock to him like baby ducks to a mother geese, as if all those months of texts left on delivered and calls ignored didn’t hurt any of them. Or maybe they’re good at pretending. Perhaps also better at forgiving, which kind of makes Daeyoung want to die even more.
Ryo and Sakuya do eventually let go and once Riku is done cooing over how big Daeyoung has gotten, Yushi stands there with a grim smile. Whatever false sense of security the other three had blanketed him in instantly vanishes.
“Hyung,” Daeyoung starts, but it’s silenced by a microscopic shake of Yushi’s head. Not here. Not now.
The youngest of the bunch pay no mind to the thickness of tension in the air. They’re back to bickering amongst themselves - something about how Sakuya’s shoes don’t match with his suit. Daeyoung can’t hear it anyway, he’s too busy trying to not drown in Yushi’s pitiful stare. Out of everyone in the group, Sion included, there’s just one person that Daeyoung could never escape. Right before Daeyoung went into hiding, there had been one drunken late night drinking session with Yushi. In the span of thirty minutes, Daeyoung bared his heart raw to Yushi - slurring through his entire timeline of affairs with Sion. Daeyoung doesn’t really remember a lot, but he knows he told Yushi too much. Then again, Yushi did tell him that he sort of knew all along.
“Sion would always tell me if he was fooling around with a girl,” Yushi had pondered wistfully, lips right above the tip of his soju bottle. “There was no one for a while. But you can’t get those marks on your body from nothing. So. I figured.”
The only indication that Yushi totally doesn’t hate him at this very moment is the hand he places on the small of Daeyoung’s back as they are ushered to their table.
Daeyoung keeps his head down and eyes trained on the silverware in front of him. He manages a weak smile when Riku leans in for a group selfie, but Daeyoung thinks he might throw up if he looks around too much. He can feel the eyes on him, the hushed whispers about him, the pictures they snap under the pretense of Daeyoung not knowing. He can feel the shutter of the phone lenses. It’s hard not to when his entire life for the past decade had been exactly this.
There’s a live orchestra right beside the stage. Riku whistles lowly beside Daeyoung. “Wow, they must have spent a lot of money on this wedding.”
They must have. Daeyoung knows from the countless Van Cleef necklaces and bracelets he used to buy for Wonyoung and from the private island getaways the two disappear for weeks on end. Daeyoung’s pretty sure Sion even bought her a really swanky car, one that he’d ask Daeyoung for his opinion on.
The wedding doesn’t look short of expensive - the silverware on the table alone costs more than the loafers Daeyoung slid on this morning. The entire venue was elegantly embellished in pale flowers and dim crystal light fixtures. There’s enough tables in there to house hundreds and hundreds of guests. Daeyoung stares hard at the wine glass on his table. He hopes someone will come around to fill it soon.
Somewhere under the table, Yushi lays his hand on top of Daeyoung’s gently. He blinks frantically, turning his head to face Yushi on his left.
“Relax,” Yushi mumbled. He sends a pointed look to the glass in Daeyoung’s hand. “You need to calm down.”
Daeyoung lets go of the wine glass immediately. He didn’t even notice his knuckles going white.
Like a sick joke, the wedding is actually lovely.
Sion comes out first, donned in a luxurious white suit that makes his perfectly styled black hair stand out. It sweeps over his forehead in one of his favourite hairstyles as of late, revealing the tiny beads of sweat already dotted above his eyebrows. Still, he looks beautiful. Like always. Nothing’s changed since the last time Daeyoung saw him. It’s almost as if Daeyoung slamming the door right on Sion’s face all those nights ago did nothing to him, while it ruined Daeyoung from the inside out. Sion stops walking a few times to bow politely to some people in the crowd. When he reaches their table, Sion breaks out into a grin that stretches across his face. His eyes circles the table, waving at all of them until he stops short at Daeyoung.
Daeyoung’s entire body runs cold. Yushi squeezes his hand, but it starts to tingle strangely.
Sion doesn’t stop smiling, although his eyes flicker with something strange. Something sad. His eyes flutter hesitantly for a millisecond before he drags them away, choosing to wave at Yushi next.
It’s all a blur when Sion continues to walk down the aisle. For a moment, Daeyoung thinks he’s seriously going to throw up. Everyone is too engrossed in watching Wonyoung walk down the aisle to notice Daeyoung’s breathing getting more and more laboured. He almost chokes on his own breath when Yushi pulls at his hand.
“Hey,” Yushi whispers. He presses the cup of ice cold water against Daeyoung’s arm, jolting him out of his panic. “Seriously. Breathe. You’re turning pale, Daeyoung-ah.”
The officiant clearing his throat on the mic snaps Daeyoung back to reality. He’s thankful enough now that Sion chose a table that faced Wonyoung’s side instead of his, so Daeyoung only needs to train his eyes on the long, white lace of Wonyoung’s dress. She is beautiful. If Daeyoung wasn’t who he was, he would’ve been happy for Sion.
Most of the ceremony goes by in the blink of an eye. The two exchange rings and the diamond on Wonyoung’s hand glints brightly from where Daeyoung is seated. He watches, like a man hellbent on his own suffering, as Sion shares a soft grin with her, giggling under his breath. Sion reaches up to swipe away a stray tear rolling down Wonyoung’s cheek. He mumbles something to her, his eyes shining with adoration when she rolls her eyes playfully at him. At this moment, Daeyoung feels like he’s intruding. Was he, as who he was, allowed to even lay his eyes on them?
Somebody calls for him. There’s a tap on his shoulder, so Daeyoung lets himself be led to the end of the venue. Somebody whispers something about walking down the aisle to stop in the middle of it. Somebody else hands him a microphone, so Daeyoung curls his fingers around the familiar coldness and tries to clear his throat.
Daeyoung’s legs walk for him, slowly up the steps of the stage and right into the end of the aisle. He’s still covered in the darkness, as everyone else listens to the vows Sion and Wonyoung speak into the mic. It echoes off the walls of the venue, ricocheting everywhere in Daeyoung’s head.
“I knew from the day we met,” Sion’s voice rings in Daeyoung’s ears. “My life would never be the same again. You smiled at me and it was like the entire world shifted on its axis.”
Daeyoung remembers the first day he met Sion. Even while distraught, Daeyoung finds it within himself to laugh. He’d been wearing that ridiculous long, black coat. His hair was still a little bit too cropped for his liking, but it made him look broader. Sion, in his bright blue sneakers and hat, called him teacher.
“From our first kiss,” the crowd roars, scandalized and amused. Somewhere on that main stage, Wonyoung turns pink. “I knew I was a goner.”
Daeyoung remembers the first night they spent together - a game lost over a shared bed. The other members had battled it out passionately over a game of rock, scissors papers. Two rocks over Yushi’s paper. It was probably some stop on their first actual tour, when their company screwed up the bookings and a queen sized bed was unavoidable.
The duvet was cold against their naked bodies. Sion spent the entire night leaving kisses on the moles dotted around Daeyoung’s body.
“I want to love you in our happiest days,” Sion’s voice trembles. “But I also want to love you on the difficult nights.”
Daeyoung remembers when he collapsed on stage. He doesn’t really remember what happened after, but he does remember waking up in the hospital hours later. The scratchy hospital uniform had annoyed him into consciousness, but he found his hand stuck in a death grip. Their manager shooed Sion away, telling him that he needed to rest. It had been six hours, she lamented. They didn’t need another member fainting.
“I promise to choose you, not only in this life, but in each and every other one where I’m given the blessing of spending with you.”
Daeyoung remembers the last night he ever spoke to Sion. Was it May.. or maybe it was June? It had been raining so heavily that Daeyoung shivers from inside his apartment. Sion, at the foot of his bed, eyes red and swollen with so many things unsaid. Daeyoung stared up at him, on his knees as he sank his fingers into Sion’s bare thighs. “Let’s just leave,” Daeyoung had whispered, mouth hovering over the waistband of Sion’s briefs. “Start anew somewhere. We don’t need to be here, right? It’s all over. The group is done.” Sion exhaled a deep sigh, absentmindedly running his hands through Daeyoung’s hair. “It won’t work,” Sion answered back. “We won’t work. You know this, Daeyoung-ah.”
There are crescent shaped imprints left on Sion’s skin, harsh and red where Daeyoung digs his nails into. “Then why do you keep coming back to me?”
Sion never answered.
But standing here, at the end of the aisle as the spotlight almost blinds him, Daeyoung finds it. He finds the answer as he walks to the middle of the stage like instructed to. He finds the answer when he’s finally in Sion’s proper eyeline, the older man gazing at him from his spot at the altar.
Daeyoung finds the answer when he blinks at Sion, almost like he’s waiting for the first hit.
The look Sion shoots him isn’t one of awkwardness or regret. No, it’s the same damn emotion Sion pours all over Daeyoung when they’re alone under a duvet, or when he’s seated next to his hospital bed with Daeyoung’s knuckles up to his lips, or when they’re standing up on an award show stage, shiny trophy ignored for the tender stares they sneak to each other.
Oh Sion is, without a doubt, the most selfish man in this entire world.